THE UGLY HISTORY OF BEAUTIFUL THINGS - Katy Kelleher

I am not familiar with author Katy Kelleher but the idea of essays on "desire and consumption" sounded really interesting. Overall, though, I was underwhelmed by this collection.

The most honest aspect here was in the introduction in which Kelleher writes: "Beauty and depression are two central factors of my life." And she goes on:

Beauty gives light to the darkness; it gives me hope and a sense of purpose. But beauty isn’t all rainbows and sunshine. Beauty is also dark. Beauty is ugly. In all my beauty-seeking, I’ve never found an object that was untouched by the depravity of human greed or unblemished by the chemical undoings of time. There are no pure things in this world: everything that lives does harm; everything that exists degrades. Yet many of us are drawn to these pretty, depraved things. We want to possess and caress the very things that frighten us.

She also notes: "I’m a fairly typical American middle-class woman, which means that I have feathered my nest with a number of useless objects and jammed my closet full with far too many cheap clothes." But I would disagree. Given her obsession with 'beautiful things' as she relates them to us, I found her to be slightly more interested in appearances and outward showing off of what she perceived to be beautiful, and likely a little more susceptible to being influenced by marketing and magazines (her term) than the average.

Yes, we do tend to see these people on social media and in magazines, and while she may see these people when she's on her shopping trips, I would disagree that this is the average as much as the manufacturers would like us to think that's the case. I think she's fallen not only for their merchandise, but their hype as well. I would agree, however, with her assessment: "I understand why, in times of swift social change, one might find refuge in the seemingly solid world of things." "Things" here is different, to me, than the more specific "beautiful things."

Probably the most striking comment in the book is not one of her own, but one she shares, made by art critic John Berger, when she writes about mirrors. She quotes him: "You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called it Vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure." Wow. That's an incredible statement!

Each of Kelleher's essays is virtually the same - there's a look at the history of the item (rarely as 'ugly' as I was expecting, then Kelleher's relationship with such an item, and then the author resolving to do better, be a better consumer and not fall for the hype. Given the format, I feel the title would have been much more apropos if it had read "My Ugly History of Beautiful Things."

Kelleher notes, in her essay 'Bone White, Paper Thin':

It’s possible to train yourself to appreciate new forms of beauty and it’s possible to fall out of love with an object. It’s even possible to disavow an aesthetic. I could buy a new set of dishes made ethically in America, fired at a local kiln. I could visit estate sales until I found a bone-china dining set that had been owned by some now-deceased family, an unwanted and anonymous group of plates onto which I could project whatever fantasy I can devise. But I don’t want to do any of these things. It would feel false and futile—wasteful too.

The fact that she would find it 'wasteful' to reuse a previously owned set of china says a lot about the author. I find that I have little in common with her and so the book doesn't reach me the way I thought it would.  I did find some nuggets of interesting information here which is why I give it as many stars as I do, but it's not a book that'll be recommending to friends who ask if I've read anything good lately.

This book contains the following:

INTRODUCTION
1. THE MERCURIAL CHARMS OF THE MIRROR
On seeing and being seen
2. MOUTH FULL OF PETALS, VEINS FULL OF WAX
On stealing, eating, praying, and playing with flowers
3. BRIGHT BLUES, CURSED CUTS
On gemstones, worry stones,
and her majesty the diamond
4. SPIRALING
On the ancient appeal of shells,
pearls, and mollusk-made wonders
5. LIVE FAST, DIE PRETTY
On gloss, glitter, whitener, and becoming ever brighter
6. DIRTY, SWEET, FLORAL, FOUL
The rank backstory of perfumery
7. WOMEN AND WORMS
The prismatic sheen of silk and its fairy-tale logic
8. DECEPTIONS AND DAMNATION
The molten glow of screens, the beauty of
stained glass, and the treachery of spectacles
9. BONE WHITE, PAPER THIN
On porcelain dishes, pale faces, and
the complicated act of setting a table
10. THE EXHALATIONS OF THE EARTH
On marble statues, engineered stones,
white lungs, and small lambs
CONCLUSION

Looking for a good book? Katy Kelleher's The Ugly History of Beautiful Things is a bit too personal to the author and unless you are someone susceptible to believing what advertisers tell you that you must have in order to be beautiful, you may not find this a valuable read.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.

2-1/2 stars

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The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Essays on Desire and Consumption

author: Katy Kelleher

publisher: Simon & Schuster

ISBN: 9781982179359

hardcover, 272 pages